Drug-free school zones laws questioned

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT), Staff and wire reports

Published 12:00 am, Thursday, March 23, 2006

In reaction to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, laws creating drug-free zones around schools spread nationwide. Now, hard questions are being raised - by legislators, activists, even law enforcement officials - about the fairness and effectiveness of those laws.

In Connecticut, New Jersey and Washington state, bills have been proposed to sharply reduce the size of the zones. A former assistant attorney general in Massachusetts reviewed hundreds of drug-free-zone cases, and found that less than 1 percent involved drug sales to youths.

Citing such developments, the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute is issuing a report today that contends such laws, which generally carry extra-stiff mandatory penalties, have done little to safeguard young people and are enforced disproportionately on blacks and Hispanics.

"For two decades, policy-makers have mistakenly assumed that these statutes shield children from drug activity," said report co-author
Judith Greene
, a New York-based researcher. "We found no evidence that drug-free zone laws protect children, but ample evidence that the laws hurt communities of color and contribute to mounting correctional costs."

New Jersey's sentencing review commission reached similar conclusions in December, when the panel - made up of state officials and criminal justice experts - found that students were involved in only 2 percent of the cases it examined. It said drug-free zones around schools, parks and housing projects cover virtually all of some cities, and 96 percent of offenders jailed for zone violations were black or Hispanic.

Instead of declining, drug arrests in the zones have risen steadily since the law took effect in 1987, the commission found.

A bill based on the panel's recommendation has been introduced that would reduce the zones to 200 feet from the present size of 1,000 feet around schools and 500 feet around parks and public housing.

In Connecticut, a hearing is scheduled Friday on a bill that would reduce school zones from 1,500 feet to 200 feet.

At recent meetings, activists with Connecticut's
A Better Way Foundation
- which supports the bill - have displayed maps of major cities showing huge sections designated as drug-free zones. A map of New Haven indicated that
Yale University
's golf course was the only large part of the city not encompassed in one of the overlapping zones.

Most states have drug-free-zone laws; they often entail mandatory prison terms that preclude such options as probation or treatment.

But both Brown and Michael said the charges, and the additional penalties they carry, can provide a valuable tool for prosecutors in plea negotiations.

Lolita Buckner Inniss
, a
Cleveland State University
law professor, is a vocal critic of the laws. Her research found that drug dealers in inner cities and compact rural towns were disproportionately likely to incur the extra penalties, in contrast to dealers in suburbs where zones covered relatively small portions of the communities. That urban-suburban split has the effect of making minorities more likely to bear the brunt of tougher sentencing rules, she said.

"I've been dissatisfied by how the public mutely accepts these laws," she said.